From customer service to inventory to sales, successful companies measure and monitor important data. For a business to thrive, leaders must know which factors contribute to their success and how to improve those measures for a competitive advantage.

Diversity is a well-known determinant of a company’s success.

In fact, a recent McKinsey study found that racially diverse companies outperform the competition by 15%. Companies that improve gender diversity outperform similar companies by 35%.

Adding those financial incentives to moral motivations, diversity initiatives have strengthened across all sectors, with companies shelling out millions to recruit diverse employees. The problem is that companies aren’t able to retain these employees and all of that money goes out the door with them.

Why?

Inclusion and collaboration are missing.

Diverse companies outperform the competition because they create better, more innovative solutions that solve problems for the largest segment of the population. By bringing diverse minds together to address customer pain points, companies are meshing ideas and action into a masterpiece of problem-solving collaboration.

These companies have cracked the code by focusing on inclusion and collaboration and watching the problem of diversity solve itself.

It’s not enough to see women and People of Color in a workplace.

Inclusive culture happens when employees actually interact with co-workers who are different from themselves on a regular basis.

When people learn about a place where they will be valued as an individual and invited to collaborate as a team, companies achieve recruitment and retention cost savings. And these companies will thrive in the 21st century, as companies with happy workers outperform the competition by 20%.

So how do you know if your company has what it takes to be a coveted employer?

You measure your company’s DICE IQ.

DICE IQ stands for Diversity, Inclusion, Collaborative Engagement Intelligence Quotient. It is a person or organization’s relative awareness, understanding, and skills in the areas of diversity, inclusion, and collaborative engagement.

The level of employee competency on key components of diversity awareness,

What sense of fairness, openness, and support employees feel within the workplace, and

How differences are leveraged within a collaborative setting.

By examining an individual’s or company’s collective DICE IQ, leaders gain a comprehensive picture of the organization’s weak points when it comes to inclusion and collaboration, and can put together a strategic plan to strengthen all levels of the organization.

Michaela

I am one of the few lucky workers in the world.

On Monday mornings, I hop out of bed with a smile on my face eager to get back to projects I left on Friday, excited to see co-workers and hear about their weekends, and motivated by the knowledge that I am making a difference.

The majority of workers across the country don’t feel this way.

In fact, the chances of falling dead from a heart attack increase by 20% on Mondays. Anxiety rises on Sunday when people start thinking about going to work. And even after retiring, there is still a noticeable increase in blood pressure on Sunday nights!

Our jobs are literally killing us.

I’m on a mission to change the way the average person feels about Monday mornings by encouraging people to find work that brightens their soul and by helping employers create workplaces where these people thrive.

Examining and improving DICE IQ is an ideal way to improve workplace culture while attracting the best employees for your company. A high DICE IQ also translates into higher sales, better customer service, and increased productivity.

What’s most significant about DICE IQ is that it focuses on a company’s most important resource: its people.

DICE IQ depicts an intimate portrait of the employee experience providing leaders with pain points that limit productivity, growth, or innovation. Using the DICE model, organizations include employees in solving these challenges, create across the board buy-in, and share the benefits of the solution.

Monday mornings should be a time to celebrate our ability to contribute to a worthy cause that is bigger than ourselves. Create an inclusive workplace and you’ll save your employee’s life. Literally.

Tasha

An inclusive workplace can be a tough nut to crack, but there’s a myth out there that there’s no way to measure inclusive culture, or to pinpoint just where you are falling short.

The DICE IQ is one tool to assess the relative diversity of a workforce and how well a company is leveraging that diversity.

The tool is unique in what it considers diverse - not just the outward dimensions of diversity such as age, gender, physical ability, and race/ethnicity, but also the dimensions of diversity that go beyond skin deep, like cultural awareness, language skills, global experience, technological savvy, and others.

By looking beyond the normal “checkbox diversity” factors, you gain insight on where key backgrounds or skillsets are missing, and how targeted recruitment can help a company capture new markets.

The Center for Talent Innovation, in fact, found that companies that reflect both the outward and deeper dimensions of diversity and inclusion in the workplace are 75 percent more likely to have a marketable idea implemented and 70 percent more likely to see their organization capture a new market.

After assessing relative diversity of the employees, DICE IQ can be used to poll employees on their workplace environment, the values of their organization, and the ways they interact with one another. This evaluation captures an important intersection of diversity and inclusion, and collaborative engagement.

By assessing team dynamics, the ways employees interact, and what networks are used within the company, DICE IQ reveals where unconscious bias may exclude some groups from decision-making processes, innovation and idea generation, or even promotion opportunities.

An inclusive culture cannot exist until a company reveals its pockets of isolation, bias, unfairness, and lack of engagement.

Once these blind spots are revealed, a company can implement targeted team building and cultural awareness activities that address broken or underutilized social systems amongst coworkers. Supervisors can also review key information from the DICE IQ survey to address individual DICE IQ needs of specific team members.

By enhancing an individual’s DICE IQ, a company can expect improvements in employee engagement, productivity, performance, and a sense of community amongst employees.

When these factors are in place, you know a company has achieved in shifting to an inclusive workplace where diversity is celebrated and integrated into core company practices.

Amber

I really enjoy talking about work. Talking about people’s passions and where they are and want to be.

The reality for many of us is that we have to work. Most in this country are fortunate to go to school and receive an education, all in preparation for, you got it, to go to work.

Adults spend on average 40 hours a week at work.

Now, let’s add in the time it takes to get dressed for work, commute to work, and get enough sleep so you can go to work the next day. Work takes up so much (life)time and energy that if you’re not feeling valued, included, successful, and engaged in your workplace, that feeling of dissatisfaction doesn’t stop once you leave work; it becomes your life.

DICE is helping organizational leaders develop their diversity, inclusion, and collaborative engagement intelligence, so they can improve the work experience of those hired to accomplish the organization's goals.

Did you know that according to a recent Gallup report, 70% of U.S. workers are not engaged at work?

That means that only 30% (30%!) of workers are involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace. Oh, and bosses, remember that an employee’s level of engagement has a direct impact on performance and productivity, and you can’t fire everybody. (A note to the employee: if you don’t like your job, you’re losing a lot of time and money anyway!).

Organizations have a responsibility to create empowered spaces for employees to solve challenges, innovate, and learn from one another.

Use the DICE IQ to check the pulse of your organization and shine light on blind spots that cause employees to feel excluded and undervalued. DICE encourages companies to expand their focus beyond diversity, to a place of discovery and enlightenment through collaborative engagement.

What’s your company’s DICE IQ?

Not sure? Let’s get together to assess your company’s culture and improve your DICE IQ. Contact us today!